Erick Antonio Benitez Let Us Compare Origins

Erick Antonio Benitez (b.1988, Bronx, NY) is a Salvadorian-American multidisciplinary artist who uses media installation, performance, painting, photography, sound sculpture and video to explore “the overlapping relationships between the personal and macro.” Through his form of storytelling, he addresses “identity, socio-cultural [and socio-political] narratives, myth, mysticism, and ecology,” particularly the Latinx diaspora and the Amazon rainforest in Loreto, Peru. Benitez reimagines a future that “incorporates healing, empowerment and decolonizing the imagination.” As such, his narratives involve site-specific research that advances his artwork’s activism. His artwork has been exhibited in Washington, DC; Los Angeles, CA; Baltimore, MD; Brooklyn, NY; Huntsville, TX; Montreal, Quebec; Barcelona, Spain; and Timișoara, Romania. Benitez was awarded the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Artist Travel Prize and the Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Award, among other honors. Benitez earned his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, California.